Busy, Busy, Busy

I don't ever want to sound like I'm complaining about having a baby.  That is never my intentions when I post.  Most of the times I'm using this as a way to either remember this life stage, talk through my emotions, or hopefully give encouragement to someone in similar circumstances that it is ok to admit to themselves it is hard. 

Following that disclaimer though I'm going to make a statement.  Camryn is a handful right now.  I think she may shorten my life span if she continues with her current antics. Maybe my memory is foggy but I do not remember Cade being in to stuff like she is.  I know he used to like to dig the DVD's out from under our TV.  That happened pretty much daily until Jay tied the doors together.  The only other incident I remember with him was eating (and scattering) a bag of BBQ chips when he was almost 2.  That was because we had no storage in our old house and we kept stuff like that in a microwave cart.  Don't get me wrong, he was a busy busy boy, but I don't remember him doing so many things that could hurt him like Camryn does.  Now taking him to the mall was a different story.  I ran constantly once he started walking, but at home he was a good kid.  It probably also helped that Jay and I could barely get the kitchen drawers open at the old house. 

Then there is Camryn.  Maybe it's my age...maybe it's that we had been in the same comfortable routine...but I believe destruction should've been her middle name.  I feel like one of those people that all of us mom's have rolled our eyes at and thought  do they even watch their kids?  Yes, I watch her all the time.  If she's not with me she is with Jay.  Occasionally we will have Cade keep her occupied while we cook or switch out laundry.  He's such a worrier though that he does a pretty good job of it, but we are only a room away.  When I went to buy outlet plugs the other day I saw all of the different safety things available....door locks, stove locks, refrigerator locks, toilet locks.  My first thought was a shiver of fear for the parents of the child who needed all that stuff....then I wondered if we might need it all by the time Camryn is out of toddlerhood. I did catch her elbow deep in our toilet one day after I stepped in our closet for 2 seconds to grab my shoes. 

I think I'm especially worn out today.  I don't think it has anything to do with Jay being gone.  The incidents that occurred the last two days would've happened anyway.  Yesterday morning I thought she was acting suspicious.  I did the finger swipe and found a penny in her mouth.  She had been right beside me all morning while I was getting ready.  I'm not sure where she found the penny.  This morning she crawled under our end table and got tangled in the cord.  It was draped around her neck.  She wasn't in any danger of choking, but it still scared me.  The electrical cord is now tied to the end table leg with some silver cording I found in my craft supplies.  That was after I found her sucking on my flip-flops. 

The flip-flop licking and the cord incident happened before 6 am. Even though she gets up a lot before 5:30 am today seemed doubly nerve wracking.  I really wasn't ready for her to be awake quite that early.  In fact I was at my desk and didn't know a customer was in the waiting area with a baby.  When I heard it cry I jumped a mile and panicked about where Camryn had crawled off to.  It took me a second to realize it was not Camryn crying and that she was safe at Stacy's.  Yes, it's going to be a long day.  And tonight Cade has baseball practice....what am I going to do with Camryn for at least an hour in cold, wet, 50 degree weather?  She will terrorize every square inch of the car I'm afraid.

State Convention, MAP Testing, Field Trip and Memory Loss...

Jay left for State Convention yesterday.  I left him with some parting words Tuesday evening, after he mentioned they dropped from 8th chapter in the state last year to 13th this year.....I don't want you whining, crying, sniffling, pouting, moping, etc after this convention.  Every one has their off years and this may be your off year.  I'm also sure Jania would concurr with that statement!

I realize that doesn't necessarily sound encouraging, but you have to learn to speak his language.  He and Lyle get a little down when things don't quite go how they hope.  Actually, I'm surprised I hadn't heard more about it before this.  They didn't qualify as many teams for state as they normally do.  They still can't complain because they qualified plenty...just not as many as normal.  He is a perfectionist with his teaching (which is a great quality in a teacher) but sometimes it can wear on him (and me). He and Lyle are great teachers, no matter what happens the next two days.  I hope he remembers that.

One thing I'm not pleased with though is that Jay is gone the week of MAP testing.  Cade is a wreck every year with the dumb things.  Someday when I'm in charge I will get rid of these ridiculous tests.  The only thing I've found they do is stress out the teacher who in turn stresses out the kid.  Every year Cade is afraid he's not going to move on to the next grade because of these things.  Really, what purpose does that serve.  When I tried explaining to Cade that this is really more of a judge of how good of a teacher Mrs D is, thinking it would make him feel better, it made him more anxious.  He said "she is a great teacher."  Now he's worried he won't do as well for her.  We're a ball of nerves this week.

His only homework this week has been to get a good nights sleep, eat a good breakfast and get to school on time.  All potential areas of failure for me this week(at least is his mind)....Last night he didn't get to bed until after 9 because I didn't realize how late it was....this morning he stressed me out because he was worried I wasn't going to get breakfast fixed....while we were eating he panicked about what time it was and was afraid he was late. 

But things were going well this morning.....until the last 3 minutes before we walked out the door.  All of a sudden he remembered his field trip slip.  It is not due until May 4th and it has to be turned in with $15 cash.  One problem we encountered when I transferred to Mt Vernon is that our bank is not here, but it is too much trouble to change banks.  Most of the time it's not a big deal but it can make getting cash tricky at times.  I just haven't got it all together to get the cash and turn everything in.  But there is still time...plenty of time.  Cade freaked out because he couldn't find the permission slip.  I told him it was in the house somewhere (I actually said it more confidentily than I felt).  If we couldn't find it we would get another one.  Then he tried to tell me that Mrs. D wouldn't give him another one.  I told him that dad would go to the school and sign it there if he needed to.  Cade informed that Dad wasn't here right now.  I lost it....I yelled at him.  I told him that we still had 2 weeks and we would get it taken care of.  Man, I hate it when I yell, but he was nagging me.  Then I was mad at myself because I thought this would be one day where we would get out the door calmly.  I could hear him sniffling as I put Camryn in the car and I was thinking you just wait until you have kids!!!! You will feel bad for nagging me this morning! 

I did apologize for yelling at him but he had to remember that we would get it taken care of.  We haven't missed sending him on a field trip yet.  Of course I did leave out the part of how I forgot to pay the electric bill Monday and didn't think about it until Wednesday.  I would've paid it earlier but I couldn't find the bill and then I fogot to call them last Friday.....He doesn't need to know that I might not remember the field trip until two days past time.  I'm a little concerned about his spring concert next Thursday...I've put reminder notes in my phone and calendar at work.  Everyone said going from 1 to 2 kids would be hard....I just didn't realize it would be this hard on my memory.  I feel like my brain is a jumble and I'm barely scrapping by with remembering everything I need to do.  Please tell me this will get better????

Being 10 months old is hard work....

...because there is so much to do!  Right now my biggest job is to make sure that nothing in the house is where it is supposed to be.   When I'm not digging in the plants I like to clear off tables and shelves.  If I find anything on a table within my reach it is tossed on the floor.  I really consider it an obsession.  I'm not satisfied until everything on the table is around my feet and everyone is scrambling to make sure I don't pull their drinks off.  It's quite fun to see three people jump around like they have ants in their pants.  But it is hard work!  A girl gets hungry with all that destruction.  I had to learn to multi-task....

Battle

We are currently having a battle of wills in our house.  Camryn wants to play in the dirt....we want the dirt to stay with the plants.  Since she doesn't know the concept of No yet we've been doing a lot of dirt sweeping.  She is so fast that you can move her to another room and she's back and in the plant before you can get the broom back in the closet.  Last night Jay decided to work on teaching her no with some light hand smacking.  She smiled the first couple of times, but then we thought he finally got the point across to her...until 10 minutes later and she was back in it.  As soon as it warms up these plants are going outside.  It's hard enough keeping the kitchen floor clean without adding in intentional dirt.

Easter

If I had to pick my favorite holiday it would be Easter.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas (the decorations are my favorite), but I really love Easter.  As I’ve gotten older and have realized more and more what Easter represents for us it gets better and better every year.  Because of Easter we have Salvation…even though we don’t deserve it. 

I also have a lot of great Easter memories.  Some of my fondest are having a Fowler dinner after church.  We usually went to Aunt Helen and Uncle Laverne’s, but a few times we had it at our house.  I remember hiding eggs for the younger kids in Helen’s front yard.  I’m sure my memory is faulty and I’m only remembering the good times, but I mostly think those Easter’s were warm and sunny….Poor Cade has had more egg hunts in the cold and rain!  But Easter has always signaled the start (hopefully) of warmer weather and sandals!  And I’d be lying if I didn’t say I enjoyed getting a new Easter dress.  Usually the shopping trips included my mom, sister and Grandma.  At the time I know we would all get frustrated with each other, because they were usually marathon days, but I wish I could go on one of those trips just one more time.  I ordered Camryn’s Easter dress online and it wasn’t quite the same….

I also have some not so good memories of Easter.  Easter was the first holiday we had to survive after our first adoption loss.  After we were matched in 2010 one of my first thoughts was I could finally buy another Easter outfit.  When Easter came and we didn’t have a baby it was hard.  I look back at those pictures and I looked and felt miserable.  It was a really hard day.

Then 2011 came around and it was a much better Easter.  We were trying to take lots of pictures that weekend for our new profile books.  I felt happy because I just knew our baby was getting close.  It’s weird to think about that because I just had a feeling, but it was hard not to get discouraged because we had so many no’s during that time period.  But I thought this new profile was the answer….So we staged a ton of pictures! 

Here we were Easter Sunday 2011….April 24.  Can you believe that in 5 weeks and 5 days our lives were about to be forever changed?

Here is a picture of Cade’s 2011 Easter “outfit”….

 Here is his 2011 Easter basket

How things changed by Easter 2012.....

The Easter baskets....

The Easter outfits

I guess for me Easter will always remind me in more ways than one that God works miracles even when we don’t deserve them.  I can’t thank Him enough for these two blessings! 

Losing things...

...or maybe it's my mind I'm losing.  It's hard to say.  At this point I feel it could go either way....

It started Tuesday night.  I got out our Pampered Chef can opener (which is a bit tricky to use anyway) and I started at it for a moment.  For the life of me I could not remember how to use it.  I think it was because my brain was shooting around all day and I had a hard time stopping one thought so I could concentrate on the task at hand (at least that's what I'm telling myself).  Finally after a few seconds of staring at it I remembered.  It reminded me of what I've heard about how to tell if it's Alzheimer's or just regular forgetfulness....Everyone misplaces their keys at times...but when you find your keys and you don't know what to do with them is the difference.  I'm not exactly sure how my problem fits in there...the can opener was exactly where it was supposed to be....it was the using of it I had the problem with.  But I did remember....eventually....

Then Tuesday night I set my alarm clock on my phone like normal.  When I woke up Wednesday morning I discovered that my phone had gone dead during the night (thanks to Cade).  I remember being in bed, reaching for the phone and seeing the black screen.  I have no idea what happened to my phone after that.  We've taken the sheets and quilt off the bed, we've looked under and behind it.  The phone is gone.  I've even vacuumed my car looking for it.  No luck.  In a last ditch effort to find it I even called the library to see if I had put it in the book drop when I dropped off some books yesterday morning.  No luck.  I was kind of 50/50 on that one....I was sort of hoping they did have the phone, but then I was relieved to find out that I didn't actually stick my phone in the book slot....Tonight I have plans to clean the house.  I'm wondering if Camryn has horded it away somewhere.....I really don't have a clue. *** as a side note here because it cracked me up...I went to Springfield to get groceries last night.  Jay let me take his phone and he stayed home with the kids.  When I got home I asked if he happened to find my phone.  He said he really hadn't had much time to look because he had been under the "Tyrannical Rule of Camryn" for most of the evening.  She is pretty hard on her dad when I'm not home in the evenings. 

While at lunch I vacuumed out the car and then I went through the car wash.  While I was waiting on it to be done I decided that would be a great time to clean out my wallet.  It was looking like it had been ransacked. Again.  While doing that I saw my library card.  On the way out of the car wash I threw the trash away and felt somewhat pleased with myself and put together.  My wallet and my purse no longer had 50 million receipts with pieces of gum that had fallen out of the wrapper stuck to them.  I ran to the library to check out a book for this weekend.  While I was in line I discovered I didn't have my library card.  I sat down behind a lady using a computer to search through my purse and wallet.  I'm sure I got on her nerves.  In the silence of the library there was me taking every card out of the slot in my wallet and searching through them.  You know that sound.....I never did find my card.  I'm wondering if I threw it away at the car wash.  For about 10 seconds I seriously entertained the idea of going back to see if I had.  But then I remembered I am in slacks and heels and the car wash is right on the main Mt Vernon street.  I really didn't want anyone to see me with my head in the trash can at the only car wash in town.  A person has to have some limits.  Besides, I scared the Mt Vernon residents enough vacuuming with pants that kept creeping down and a shirt that kept creeping up....

 I need a vacation - I'm so glad I took off Friday and Monday.  We are going to spend the weekend together, which we have not done since the end of January.  I think my brain is maxed out.  All I can think is if I'm this crazy with my personal stuff what have I done at work....thank goodness I only deal with loan applications and not something more important.  Like a doctor or a nurse!  I might have forgotten how to use a stethoscope...in front of a patient!

Almost chicken time. Again.

A few seconds ago I got an email reminder about some 4-H stuff….Trash Pick Up is Sunday the 15^th.  Also, I noticed that Jay Shepherd is holding a poultry meeting at 6:30 before the regular 4-H meeting on the 17^th.  I wondered why in the world he would’ve scheduled such a thing the night before he leaves for State Convention.  Then I realized that it is April.  We will have baby chicks coming to live with us in a few days.  Looking at the calendar they sure better be waiting until after April 21^st.  Surely they will….Jay wouldn’t trust me to be left alone with them while he is in Columbia…..  Here we go again.  That crazy look he gets will come back.  I’ll see credit card charges to poultry companies in Arkansas.  There will be several phone calls a night to his dad.  I’ll be asked to turn off the heat lamps at lunch….while wearing a dress.  Yes, it is April isn’t it.